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Te Kanawa's Final Bouquet at the Met?

This month, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa has been singing radiantly and moving audiences as the Countess in the Metropolitan Opera's production of Richard Strauss's ''Capriccio.'' The last of six performances will be tomorrow afternoon.

But since she arrived, talk had been going around the opera circuit that tomorrow's performance may be Dame Kiri's last with the company. She is not scheduled to perform with the Met next season. The company has tried to engage her for the year 2000 and beyond, but she has declined to make any commitments.

''I am too frightened to look that far ahead,'' she said during a recent interview, the first occasion on which she has addressed the question publicly. ''Life is full of surprise turns. Anything can be around the corner, and I like to live for the minute.''

But the Met cannot live for the minute. Productions are planned, and singers booked, years in advance. Though only 53, Dame Kiri concedes that she is phasing down her career. So, tomorrow's performance truly could be the last she will give in a house where she has brought her creamy voice, musical intelligence and stunning beauty to roles like Mozart's Countess and Fiordiligi, Verdi's Desdemona and Amelia and Strauss's Arabella and Marschallin.

Yet she will not definitely state her intentions. ''I'm not trying to be cute,'' she said, sipping tea in an apartment near Lincoln Center that she rents when in town. ''The word got around, and you know how hard it is to stop chin-wagging. I've called the Met and kidded them about it: 'Pushing me out, are you?' At my age, you start to think about yourself vocally. There is a time to go, and I'd rather go too soon than too late. But I've learned to never say never.''

That Dame Kiri's voice is patchier and less rich than it once was is to be expected. Even in her prime, there was a quality of restraint in her singing that some critics found refined and elegant and others found cool and uninvolved. Yet, when the Met presented its first production of Strauss's final opera earlier this month, the critical consensus was that Dame Kiri's portrayal of the Countess -- a glamorous, worldly, recently widowed woman being courted by two younger men -- was vocally nuanced, articulate and affecting. Why would she stop when she is singing so well?

The answer, it seems, is bound up with the same quality in her character that has critics divided over her artistry: a desire to keep something for herself. ''I feel like I've devoted a lot to music and been fairly true and responsible,'' she said. ''But I need to get on with my life while I'm still fit.'' Sports are her passion: golf, fishing, boating, hiking, even clay-pigeon shooting. When she is not staying at her London home, she loves spending time in her native New Zealand, at her house way up north in the Bay of Islands area.

''It's fantastic,'' she said. ''Very lush, green, foresty and damp. The inlets from the sea are lovely. I swim, shoot and get rejuvenated. I miss that.'' She points out that committing herself to the Met's ''Capriccio'' has meant spending two months in New York, all the time terrified of catching a cold. The routine and constant travel of an operatic career is wearying. ''After a while, one gets tired of seeing those same old suitcases,'' she said.

Such comments make it seem that Dame Kiri is more definite about not coming back to the Met than she is letting on. But even if she were certain about this, she would not want a farewell send-off, like the frenzied 40-minute ovation that the great Leonie Rysanek received in 1995 when she sang her final performances at the house in Tchaikovsky's ''Pique Dame.''

''I would not want to call attention to it,'' she said. ''To me, there is a certain arrogance involved in that, and I just want to step away.''

To some, this may seem like a pose. But for all her star quality, Dame Kiri has never been one to crave bravos. Taking curtain calls onstage, she can seem uncomfortable.

''My favorite part of my work is rehearsing with the cast,'' she said. ''Then, to go into a performance and know that the audience is with you is thrilling. But after the curtain goes down, I would be just as happy to go home.''

When she is noticed on the street or in an elevator by an enthusiastic fan, she understands that people want to express that she has given them pleasure. But unlike most divas, she is uneasy about it. ''I go blank,'' she said. ''I start to think, how will I get out of this politely? That they have come to the performance already shows me that they are grateful.''

This sense of privacy imbues Dame Kiri's characterization of the Countess, which, John Cox, the British director who did the Met's ''Capriccio,'' thinks is the key to her achievement in the role.

''It's interesting to wonder why Strauss wanted the Countess to be a widow,'' Mr. Cox said in a telephone interview from London. ''Clearly, he conceived a woman of more experience than the young men courting her. Far from being a drawback, Kiri's privacy is an advantage.'' In a phrase that could describe the woman as well as the character, he added: ''You know there is a depth of feeling beneath what is revealed. It makes for a more resonant performance.''

Mr. Cox, who has worked with Dame Kiri in previous productions of ''Capriccio,'' believes that a personal setback in her life has profoundly enriched her portrayal of the character. Last year, she and her husband, an Australian in the oil business, divorced. She takes comfort in her children, a daughter of 22 who is pursuing art and a son of 19 who wants to study business, but the breakup, which she is reluctant to discuss, was difficult, Mr. Cox said. Still, he added, it has helped her understand what the widowed Countess feels.

''The poignancy of loss is something Kiri has this time in a way she didn't when we worked on the opera in San Francisco and London,'' he said. ''It has deepened the coloring of her interpretation.''

Dame Kiri is more comfortable discussing the Countess's sadness than her own. To her the most difficult challenge of the opera is its conversational density. Strauss uses the friendly rivalry of the two young men, a poet and a composer, as a framing device for a sort of Platonic dialogue about whether words or music are more important in opera. ''Capriccio'' is a work for connoisseurs, a literate, witty, urbane, very chatty opera. Keeping the words clear and interesting while finding the lyrical thread that runs through the score and projecting it to the audience is very difficult, Dame Kiri has found.

''Melody runs through the score, but in bits and pieces,'' Dame Kiri said. ''You wait and wait, and think, here it is, there it comes, at last. And when the Countess's final solo scene arrives, with its lyrical outpouring, in this context, it seems like the most gloriously melodic music ever, what opera is all about.''

Without the Met's back-of-the-seat titling system, Dame Kiri believes the opera ''would not have gotten off the ground.'' But the other key to making this ''conversation piece,'' as Strauss subtitles it, pertinent today was the decision to update the setting, a move Strauss fanciers may decry.

The story takes place in Paris in the 1780's, a time when Gluck's operatic reforms were a raging artistic controversy. Using costumes mostly from the Glyndebourne production, Mr. Cox whisks the story to Paris in the 1920's, a choice he strongly defends.

''I find that I can express character more accurately through 20th-century dress than through period costumes,'' he said. ''Whether someone wears a flannel suit, or an open-neck shirt, or carries a pocketbook, or wears pearls can tell audiences a lot about a character.''

What about the hash the updating makes of the ''Capriccio'' text, in which, for example, the Countess speaks of having personally known the French Baroque composer Couperin?

''Operagoers have to learn to take a leap,'' he said. ''We should be used to this by now from the other arts, where it has been happening for centuries. In depicting a biblical scene, for example, the painter Brueghel had no problem placing the slaughter of the innocents in a 16th-century Flemish village, to make the message more available.''

Dame Kiri points to Mr. Cox's depiction of the young suitors as a good example of how this principle works. When the curtain goes up, we see Flamand in a conservative three-piece suit, listening intently to a performance of his new string sextet in a room next door. Olivier sits on the sofa in a navy blue blazer, white pants and sneakers, leafing through a magazine. Immediately you know who these men are, Dame Kiri suggests: the serious, romantic composer and the breezy, well-heeled poet. ''But the costumes also tell us that Olivier has gotten the Countess's invitation all wrong,'' she explains. ''He has shown up for tennis, when the affair was an afternoon cocktail party.''

For Dame Kiri, the updating enabled her to portray the Countess without the stylized restraints of period costuming. ''Just to be able to sit on the arm of a sofa, or to lounge across it, in an opera performance is wonderful and freeing,'' she said.

Dame Kiri's schedule for the immediate future is full enough for her. There are some coming concerts in Japan. She will sing ''Capriccio'' this summer in Glyndebourne, the same production with nearly the same cast. And she is pleased with two recent recordings released by EMI: a record of German arias with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Julius Rudel, and a new program of songs by Berlin -- Irving Berlin, that is -- with Jonathan Tunick as arranger and conductor.

Dame Kiri's singing of musical theater repertory over the years has had its share of critics, but she does not care. This is music she loves. And her taste in Broadway is inclusive. While in New York, she took in ''Ragtime,'' which she enjoyed immensely, and saw ''The Lion King'' twice.

Recitals and recordings, including more Broadway songs, are the kinds of projects she may continue after she stops singing opera. There are no roles tempting her that she has not already sung. The lure of sports, her children and free time is powerful. How can an engagement at the Met in the year 2000 compete with what will happen in New Zealand that year? ''We have the America's Cup,'' she said, excitedly. ''And then there's the Olympics in Australia. A lot to do.''

Strauss Tickets

The soprano Kiri Te Kanawa plays Countess Madeleine in the Metropolitan Opera production of Richard Strauss's last opera, ''Capriccio,'' tomorrow afternoon at 1:30. Set in Paris, the work tells of the widowed Countess Madeleine, who is being courted by two suitors, a composer and a poet. The opera is performed in German with Met titles in English. The conductor is Andrew Davis. Tickets: $25 to $200. Sold out except for standing-room tickets, at $11 and $15, which are available on the day of the performance at 10 A.M. Returned tickets may also be available that day. Information: (212) 362-6000.